


under the sun, at midnight

by birdsandivory



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Delusions, Emotional Baggage, Hallucinations, M/M, Mental Anguish, Mental Instability, Mid-Canon, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Wartime, a confession of sorts, and the gentlest dedue, the real truth about love, with a touch of flower language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:40:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28418511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdsandivory/pseuds/birdsandivory
Summary: There’s a flower that buds beneath a meager stream of moonlight pouring from the gaping wound in the cathedral’s stained glass. It’s beautiful, resilient, and in need of little rain—but unafraid to drink it up if the waters happen to fall. Every night, it blossoms despite the hardships it faces throughout the day. Against all inevitable misfortune.It is just like Dedue.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Dedue Molinaro
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	under the sun, at midnight

**Author's Note:**

> i'm so proud to present my piece for [Cherished: A Dimidue Zine](https://twitter.com/CHERISHEDZINE)!! i wanted to capture the essence of their love during such difficult times of war, but i just created something emotionally unstable instead—of course. still, i think the greatest thing about dimitri and dedue is that, even when they're pushed to their limits, their hearts remain kind and true to the bitter end. so hopefully that's something that comes through in this piece. 
> 
> i hope you guys enjoy it! and, of course, big thanks to [maki](https://twitter.com/orgiastique) and the zine mods for beta-reading this for me!

*******

Dimitri thinks little of the goddess now.

A vast part of him—within the deepest, darkest pools of his chest—doesn’t believe she deserves to be revered as the arms that carry the world to places of dreams and paradise. Neither her song nor her love can cast miracles; her name cannot bring back the dead. She deserves not fame nor worship nor prayer.

To think, they even praise the flowers that break through the earth as her divine creations. 

Standing before the piled rubble in the remnants of the cathedral, that belief is understood as truth as evening falls to the shadow of night right before him. 

Dimitri glares at everything these days—empty academy classrooms, his supportive comrades, his _professor_ —yet... he cannot bring himself to pierce with a lone eye the fleshy petals of a solitary bloom peeking from between the rocks within the heart of the monastery. 

There’s a flower that buds beneath a meager stream of moonlight pouring from the gaping wound in the cathedral’s stained glass. It’s beautiful, resilient, and in need of little rain—but unafraid to drink it up if the waters happen to fall. Every night, it blossoms despite the hardships it faces throughout the day, against all inevitable misfortune.

It is just like Dedue.

Dimitri cannot bring himself to sigh; in other circumstances, he thinks he would. He might even do so mirthfully, recalling a fond memory of when he was a child looking over one of the small ponds in the courtyards of his home in Fhirdiad. A younger Dimitri had gazed upon glowing lotuses floating atop the water, had smiled at one more beautiful than all the rest and called it Dedue. 

But now, he can’t kid himself with even the ghost of his old grin.

So, Dimitri merely watches, admires unfurled petals as though they are a miracle—as if just by looking, he might be healed. As if it is the only saving grace in this world—a constant reminder, even when he is alone, of the greatest friend he’s ever known. 

It’s the only way Dimitri will allow himself to believe that this flower, so much like Dedue, would choose to grow here in this broken cathedral—the only excuse he can cling to so that he doesn’t fall into the goddess’ trap. She is not responsible for its revival, as though the fact that it’s survived the rubble is proof of her blessings. 

Where had she been all those years ago when Dedue had disappeared?

She did not bring him back— 

Dimitri quells his anger. 

There was no need to bring him back because Dedue had never died; he was rescued before steel could meet his flesh.

Then, why hadn’t he...?

Footsteps fall in measured cadence across the cathedral floor.

Dimitri feels his shoulders seizing, coiling spun steel—paranoia jabbing beneath his skin like the raining pinprick of a thousand needles. His lips part as if to speak, bellowing threat on his tongue, knowing a rumbling whisper carried by the walls is all it takes to make someone leave him be. But most are aware by now that it isn’t wise to bother him when he’s here at night. No one would dare, save the professor, and she left his presence some time ago in the daylight hours. 

There’s only one other person who would brave him at his worst.

It’s quiet for a long time. Dimitri doesn’t turn away from the flower to regard him, not now; he’s been overwhelmed by Dedue’s presence since the day he returned to him—to the Kingdom army’s rescue. The time has come for Dimitri to reflect, to understand where he’s gone terribly wrong, what he must do to make amends.

The only answer that comes to mind darkens his thoughts.

Dedue’s voice suddenly breaks the silence.

“A moon flower,” he says softly, though his deep timbre echoes from the walls of the cathedral as if he were the choir himself. “They are native to Duscur.”

 _How curious for one to bloom here_ goes unsaid, but Dimitri can always tell when Dedue is surprised: that small, barely-there rise in his pitch, words that are usually spoken thoughtfully slow are breathed with just the slightest waver. It is almost second nature, Dimitri deciphering the secrets of Dedue.

He struggles, however, for words of his own—words that he fears he cannot say without everything falling apart, cannot utter without being unsure if they are his or his father's. Or perhaps Glenn’s, whispered in his ear and channeled by his tongue. But there is something about Dedue that almost rekindles the flame in his dark heart, so he tries where—for anyone else—he would not.

“It was merely a bud moments ago,” Dimitri says after a while, voice hollow, dead as the ghosts who haunt him. “It bloomed right before me.”

“They open only at night, when all is calm and cool,” Dedue explains, and his pause is so great that Dimitri can’t help but pull his gaze away from that lone, ivory flower to look into tranquil ripples of seafoam. “To them, the moon is the sun.”

Dedue looks at him in a way Dimitri can’t begin to describe. His lips curl ever so slightly, with all the ample curves of an unstrung scythian bow, and Dimitri can nearly taste the affection as he parts his own, unsure—always so unsure—of the right thing to say. But he doesn’t dwell, doesn’t attempt to strum his vocal chords in the hopes that they’ll play something other than a broken, dreary tune. Instead, he gets lost in Dedue’s eyes; those eyes that never cease to be so kind, so warm and utterly breathtaking that Dimitri almost remembers what it was like to look at Dedue with that same, tender fondness. 

But the past was a much simpler time—there is no more Dimitri and Dedue, enjoying the solace of each other’s company. 

Because he can feel _them_ watching from behind, their frigid hands on his back.

His father, his stepmother, Glenn—their palms like the bitter cold on his shoulders as they watch him hold quaint conversations instead of avenging them. Their mouths, twisting, asking why he’s running his instead of tearing his way through forests and rivers, instead of clawing the concrete of Enbarr’s city streets and finally allowing Areadbhar to taste Edelgard’s blackened flesh—

Swallowing, Dimitri averts his gaze.

The sight of rubble instead of soft, verdant eyes doesn’t save Dedue from the onslaught of voices surrounding them, and it doesn’t save Dimitri from the fingers slowly wrapping around his neck, grasping his arms and pulling him deeper into dark waters. He sinks into the marble of the cathedral as though its solid grounds never existed, not bothering to take one final breath as he’s submerged beneath the rippling surface of his own desolate lake. It is better this way, he thinks, further away from the Dedue he could not save himself.

Better the ghosts than the guilt.

Only they understand, these slithering hands—only they know that if he’s saved, he will never get his revenge. 

A bright light shines above him through the water’s glassy plane and he’s nearly blinded as it illuminates the blackness surrounding him. Dimitri cannot escape it. No matter how much he struggles, their hands hold him in place. So, he floats—floats until all is tranquil once more and that radiant brilliance dims to a calm, luminescent glow. It’s only when petals begin to fall into the ripples that he realizes where the light is coming from.

When he looks to the moon flower, it seems as though it’s looking back. 

_To them, the moon is the sun._

“—often.”

Dimitri opens his eye at the sound of Dedue’s voice, unaware that he had closed it in the first place. 

“What?” He doesn’t mean to ask, doesn’t mean to sound confused, but where he was once floating is solid ground once more. Dimitri angers at his own disillusionment, jaw locking as he glares ahead. 

“You stand here alone often.” It is not a question, but a fact. Dimitri has half a mind to deny it, to say that the days and nights within these walls meld into a single fracture in time, a sliver of a second that can barely pass as ‘often.’ But Dedue shifts beside him, unsure of himself, as if he’s cautious—cautious of _him—_ and Dimitri decidedly keeps his mouth shut _._ “There is something that keeps you here in this place. Is that why you would not see me after we arrived back?”

“Who do you think you are _talking_ to?” Dimitri snaps at the accusation—at the very gall to _question_ him—but... this is _Dedue,_ he thinks. And that second self beneath his skin cries out under the surface, a reminder that his anger is for him alone and this is _Dedue._ “I am sorry.”

“You need not apologize to me, Your Highness,” Dedue says simply, and just the sincerity of those words pierces through something cold inside of him. “I understand. My being alive does not mean you owe me anything—”

“You are wrong,” Dimitri hears himself whisper, though it sounds like a shout within these holy walls. “You are... wrong—I owe you everything.”

Dedue takes a step toward him, pausing when Dimitri flinches. He does not move again.

“You are troubled.” 

“I am not well, Dedue,” Dimitri admits, though it feels like a truth he’s trying to convince himself of. “They come to me.”

“They?”

“My...” He does not finish—cannot finish. And understanding as ever, Dedue nods.

“You need not say more if you do not wish to.”

But Dimitri wants to, he finds—wants to tell Dedue everything—for fear of the rift between them becoming a bottomless fissure he can never hope to mend. 

“My father,” he begins, feeling the grip on his shoulder tighten; it must be the hands. “My father, Glenn, and... _her._ ”

Dedue is far too silent and Dimitri almost fears that he is talking to himself. 

And then, he remembers—Dedue is _alive._

That thought is all he needs to continue.

“I hoped that maybe you’d come to me, too.” Voice shaking, Dimitri chances a glance. “To say awful things I deserved to hear, to tell me it was all my fault.” And as that solemn face falls farther, before Dedue can tell him otherwise, he breathes, “it’s what I’d _hoped_ for when it all began.”

“Your Highness...”

“And you did. You came, but”—Dimitri shakes his head—“you forgave me... just like I knew you would,” he says, a short, disbelieving huff escaping him. “Even as a ghost in my mind, you were still so kind to me.”

After just a single beat, Dimitri crumbles. “I could not bear it. I—”

“I have come again, but not as the dead. I came for you,” Dedue says calmly, his voice so perfectly even and somehow overflowing with emotion still. The gentleness of his tone is enough to make Dimitri look upon him, eye wide with wonder, hopeful and hanging from every word. “Because this world needs you, your people and mine.”

“Do they?” Dimitri replies in turn, heart aching from Dedue’s merciless truths despite the voices in his head begging for him not to believe such things. He ignores them, pushes them away just for a second, because part of Dimitri thinks of Dedue as he thinks of Duscur’s moon flower—another of this world’s miracles; made solely for him. “Dedue, you think you need me, but it is I who need you.” 

“Then you have me, always.” Dedue places a hand over his chest and this time, when he takes a step closer, Dimitri doesn’t shy away. “There is nowhere I wish to be but by your side.”

That same hand, having touched Dedue’s heart, falls to Dimitri’s shoulder then—heavy, but so generously warm that Dimitri can feel it melting the frost beneath his skin. The fingertips digging into his back like hooks under his flesh rage behind them, and he fights himself for this one moment, a split second where everything is fine and he doesn’t have to face the darkness. The voices. Those hands. And it’s not until he’s free of them that he realizes he doesn’t need to. 

Dedue’s smile chases them all away.

Only they and the white petals beneath the moonlight remain.

And the hand reaching out is none other than Dimitri’s own.

“Stay by my side,” he says suddenly, and without another word, he’s pulled into Dedue’s chest, enveloped in strong arms that hold him like something rare and precious. He’s unable to stop himself from clinging like a child, his arms around Dedue’s back more real than any battle he’s faced in this war. Dimitri’s fingers curl into the wool of a decorated scarf, into the grooves of heavy armor while he brings himself impossibly close—as if all he needs is to be immersed in all that is Dedue.

“Stay by my side,” Dimitri says again.

Dedue’s hum reverberates through his entire being. 

“Always.”

And the moon flower blossoms.

**Author's Note:**

> “Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
> 
> [twitter.](https://twitter.com/birdsandivory)


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